Drainage Contractor in Hendricks County, Indiana

The work

The drainage work we get called for here

Yards that hold water

A yard that tips toward the house, or is so flat that rain just sits, is a grading problem first. We reshape the ground so it falls away from the foundation and give the water a swale to follow. Our yard grading and drainage guide explains the options.

Drain tile and catch basins

Where the ground is too flat to drain on the surface, tile or a catch basin moves the water underground. Every pipe needs fall and a place to empty that is allowed to take it. Pipe laid flat, or to nowhere, is just a pipe full of standing water.

Field tile under a subdivision

Much of the county was farmed and tiled before the houses came, and the old tile is still under many lots. A wet stripe across a lawn or a hole that keeps opening along a straight line is often a broken tile. It gets dug up and repaired or rerouted, not buried again.

Culverts and washed-out drives

A drive that washes is usually a water problem, not a stone problem. The culvert under the drive may be too small, crushed or silted shut. See the driveway culvert guide for the signs and who to ask on each kind of road.

The ground

Why Hendricks County ground holds water

Three things about the ground here are why so much of the work in this county is drainage.

Flat till plain

Most of the county is flat, and flat ground is harder to drain than a slope. There is little natural fall to work with, so every inch of grade has to be set on purpose.

Slow-draining clay soils

Crosby soils, common on the till plains of central Indiana, are rated somewhat poorly drained by the USDA. Brookston soils sit in the low spots and are rated poorly drained. You can look up the soils on any lot on the NRCS Web Soil Survey before anyone digs.

Tile nobody drew

Indiana 811 marks the utilities its members own. It does not mark old field tile, and on former farm ground that tile can run almost anywhere. We expect to cross it and deal with it properly.

Rules

Who to ask before water is moved

Many county ditches and tile mains are regulated drains under Indiana's drainage law, Indiana Code 36-9-27. The Hendricks County Surveyor's Office maintains them, reviews drainage board projects and issues the permits that go with them. Permanent structures and new trees on a regulated drain's right-of-way need the drainage board's written consent. Before you tie a new line into a county drain, or build or fence near one, ask the surveyor's office. Our guide to regulated drains and drainage ditches in Indiana covers the rest.

The ditch beside a county road belongs to the county highway department, and the ditch beside a state highway or US route is INDOT's. Inside Avon, Plainfield, Brownsburg, Danville or Pittsboro, the town office can tell you about local stormwater rules. Work that disturbs an acre or more can come under IDEM's Construction Stormwater General Permit, and work in a mapped floodway needs an Indiana DNR permit first.

Anything that breaks ground is located through Indiana 811 first, with at least two full working days' notice. We file the locate.

What comes next

After the pipe goes in

Drainage work leaves bare ground. The same crew sets the finish grade, topsoil, seed and straw so the yard holds through the next storm. Where a drive has washed, we can repair and regrade it once the water has somewhere to go.

For the rest of what we do in the county, see the Hendricks County page or the town pages for Danville, Pittsboro and Avon.

On the ground

Drainage work, photographed

Every photograph on this site is a job On Grade did. Nothing is stock and nothing is staged.